1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a system for cooling heat producing products stored within an enclosure. More specifically, the system includes an apparatus for monitoring and controlling conditions within the enclosure.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Most cabinet cooling systems are not integrated with a fault tolerant concurrently maintainable and transparently expandable design that integrates with a raised floor or overhead cooling system to accomplish reasonable control overheating of heat producing product stored within the cabinet. Heat produced by equipment in high technology systems exceed the capacity of cabinets currently available. Without an effective cooling system, heat producing electronic equipment is susceptible to overheating.
Often, expensive quality uninterruptible power systems (UPS) are installed for both the computer systems and cabinet fan powered cooling assemblies. Existing cabinet cooling technologies waste available UPS power because methods do not exist to vary cooling energy as a percentage of the power required to cool the electronic heat producing equipment installed in the cabinets. A conventional cabinet for storing computers and peripheral equipment will include a fan. However, the fan is generally non-redundant and improperly sized to cool the cabinet and the product(s) housed therein, and the expensive UPS is wasted.
When the cabinet is initially populated, the cooling system in the cabinet may be sufficient to handle the heat loads expected from housing electronic equipment therein. However, these cooling systems are static in that they are not designed to accommodate a load greater than the initial design. Fan cooling systems for conventional cabinets that are initially sized to accommodate maximum cabinet leads waste UPS capacity. There are many industries that cannot readily accept down time of equipment to accommodate changes. Examples of such industries include railway, production line control systems, financial markets, air travel reservation centers, and the like. Accordingly, there is a need for a dynamic cabinet cooling system.
In addition to providing a static cooling system, the cabinet industry practice is to provide large cuts in a raised floor that are left open with only a few square inches containing any cables or wires. Cooling air is drained from the raised floor unimpeded through the excessive cable openings. This results in loss of air and static pressure that is needed for cooling elements or equipment in other cabinets housed in the room. Overhead cooling is distributed from overhead ducts and a method is required to efficiently distribute this cool air to heat producing equipment in the cabinet. If the cool air is not efficiently distributed in the room, the heat producing equipment is wasting capacity and placing the heat producing equipment stored in the cabinet at risk. Elevated floor tiles designed to accommodate the cabinet and to provide adequate support for the cabinet cost approximately $100 per tile, and is labor intensive for installation. Cutting of the tiles in association with cabinet installation is time consuming and generally expensive, as well. The prior art does not provide a solution to integrate the floor and the cabinet(s) for efficient operation of the cabinet environment.
In a significant number of large installations, cabinets are set in a side-by-side fashion without walls between adjacent cabinets. An entire interior area may be considered as a single entity resulting in large amounts of fans used in aggregate and wasted critical power. In these installations, a fan or perhaps two fans are located in a top wall of the cabinets and may be programmed to operate at a fixed speed. A cabinet with a large heat load may be positioned next to a cabinet with a small heat load. Yet the fan associated with the later cabinet may be operating at full speed. The standard procedure in such systems with separations between adjacent cabinets is to operate the fans at a standard speed regardless of load. This procedure wastes power and cooling capacity. In general, less than 10% of the power supplied to the cabinet should be used for cooling. The remaining power capacity should be set aside for operating the equipment stored within the cabinet. Accordingly, effort should be focused on conserving cooling capacity set aside for cooling the equipment stored within the cabinet.
Electronic equipment housed within the cabinets has wires that are connected to power supplies and cables that are connected to communication equipment. Large losses of cooling energy are encountered through openings in the cabinets through which cables and wires are introduced into the cabinets. Inadequate use of masking or structural features to provide shielding is encountered in the prior art. For example, prior art cabinets are not designed to accommodate adjustments in the field to the environment. Openings cut in the cabinet during installation or subsequent to installation are generally made to enable technicians to pull wires and cables. However, such openings are generally too large to enable support or adjustment for the cooling system of the cabinet. In many cases, the cabinets are pre-wired and left unpowered, waiting months for operating loads to materialize. Yet, the openings left by the installing technicians would not be closed. Any and all air passing through these access openings under the floor waste cooling capacity and static pressure. As the air is wasted from one area of the room, other areas in the room are placed at risk. These openings fail to properly control cooling capacity and static pressure. Furthermore, the problem of wasted cooling capacity can not be corrected even if other critical systems are adversely affected once the cabinet(s) is used to house telecommunications or critical electronic equipment because of the need for continuous data and telecommunications processing from that equipment. Such systems do not enable shutdown of operations to correct the problem. Retrofitting existing cabinets with an on-line processing load is nearly impossible to accomplish without risk. This latter procedure relates to the cooling capacity and pressure under tile floors and the need to insure that each cabinet drains off minimum cooling air and produces minimum pressure drop once the cabinet is installed. Accordingly, a transparently scalable system to adjust cooling capacity without risk is a critical process.
There is therefore a need for a cabinet designed to house electronic and/or telecommunication equipment with an automatic and dynamic cooling means. Such a cabinet must be able to house the equipment while still allowing for modification of cooling requirements during use of the installed equipment.
This invention comprises a system for cooling a cabinet housing heat producing elements.
In a first aspect of the invention, the system includes an enclosure with an interior area. The enclosure includes a top wall, a bottom wall, and a shelf located in a fixed position. The bottom wall has a variable size opening therein. The shelf is positioned to enable flow of cooling gas through the variable size opening and to permit access to the variable size opening. The top wall has an opening. A plurality of panels are selectively insertable into the opening in the top wall. One of the panels is adapted to control air flow through the opening in the top wall. Both means for inducting cool ambient air into the enclosure and means for dynamically controlling conditions within the enclosure are provided. In addition, a dual source power cord processor may be provided to deliver current to electronic equipment within the cabinet. The air inducting means preferably includes six variable speed fans. The dynamic cabinet control means preferably includes an input/output micro controller adapted to monitor variants within the enclosure. In addition, the micro controller is preferably adapted to vary operating speed of the fans within the enclosure. Finally, the enclosure may include a captive fastener for securing the panel of the top wall of the enclosure.
In a second aspect of the invention, a method for cooling a cabinet containing heat producing elements is provided. The cabinet has an interior with a top wall having an opening, and a bottom wall having a variable size opening. The method includes positioning a shelf for enabling flow of cooling gas through the variable size opening and permitting access thereto, and selectively inserting a panel into the top wall opening for controlling air flow through the opening. The method also includes inducting cool ambient air into the cabinet. Conditions within the cabinet are dynamically controlled by means of an input/output micro controller, which also may monitor variants within the cabinet. The variants may include temperature, power, door access, vibration, humidity, and fan speed. A plurality of micro controller may be connected through a communication network, wherein the network may be monitored through a server. A message may be sent from a micro controller within the network to a remote location for conveying operating conditions within an individual cabinet in an array of cabinets. In addition, variants among a plurality of cabinets in a single room may be balanced. Accordingly, the second aspect provides a method for dynamically monitoring and controlling variants within an interior of the cabinet.
Other features and advantages of this invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the presently preferred embodiment of the invention, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.